Some Early Speculations on the Origin of Human Races [originally published in American Anthropologist, 56:31-41, 1954]

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Some Early Speculations on the Origin of Human Races [originally published in American Anthropologist, 56:31-41, 1954] JOHN C. GREENE University of Wisconsin THE publication of Professor Count's anthology This Is Race has done much to stimulate interest in the history of research and speculation concerning the races of man, a subject which historians of science have only begun to explore. In 1946 Count (p. 142) divided the history of raciology into four periods-the eighteenthcentury (to 1815), the pre-darwinian period (1815-1860), the post-darwinian period (1860-1914), the twentieth-century (since 1914)-and went on to describe the leading developments of the second period, with some reference to the earlier work of Blumenbach and Kant. 1 The present article deals with the period before 1815 and especially with theories of race formation. Before entering on the main theme it would be well, however, to say a word about the character and leading assumptions of eighteenthcentury anthropology. In the first place, there were no "anthropologists" in this period in the sense of naturalists who devoted themselves exclusively to anthropological research. Among those who took an interest in "the natural history of man," Linnaeus was primarily a botanist, Iromanuel Kant a philosopher, Maupertuis a mathematician, Cuvier and Camper comparative anatomists, Samuel Stanhope Smith a clergyman and moral philosopher, William Wells a physician. Blumenbach wrote a handbook of natural history, a manual of comparative anatomy, and a treatise on physiology besides his anthropological writings. It is not surprising, then, that speculation predominated over research. Yet there was research, some of it well done; and speculation, though often far-fetched, was bold and sometimes amazingly prescient. Secondly, it must be kept in mind that eighteenth-century biology assumed a hard and fast distinction between species and varieties. Species were regarded as immutable prototypes fashioned "in the beginning" by an all-wise 1 The most comprehensive general history of anthropology is Wilhelm E. Mühlmann, Geschichte der Anthropologie (1948). Alfred C. Haddon, History of Anthropology {1934) is extremely brief. T. K. Penniman's A Hundred Years of Anthropology (2nd ed. rev., 1952) begins effectively in 1835, drawing for the earlier period on Thomas Bendyshe, "The History of Anthropology," Memoirs Read Before the Anthropological Society of London I (1863-1864) : 335-458. Creator and perfectly adapted to their role in the divine economy of nature. Varieties, on the other hand, were viewed as products of time, chance, and circumstance. Thc true botanist, said Linnaeus, will not concern himself with "the various forms of sporting nature" except insofar as is necessary to distinguish them from true species (Linnaeus 1737 [1938]: 196-197). With respect to human races, therefore, it made a world of difference whether they were regarded as separate species or as varieties of a single one. If they were distinct species there was no scientific question as to their origin and peculiar characteristics, these being simply what God in his wisdom had ordained them to be. But if human races were varieties their peculiarities must be accounted for by natural causes. Thus, the decision concerning the genetic unity or diversity of human types was a momentous one from a scientific point of view. Theologically it was even more crucial, since it bore on the credibility of Scripture. Politically it was important, too, coloring the white man s conceptions of his rights and duties with respect to the inhabitants of the various regions of the world which were being brought under European domination. Contrary to a fairly widespread opinion among modern anthropologists, the loading naturalists of the period under discussion did not beliove in a plurality of human species or in "pure races The advocates of this hypothesis were, in general, either lesser lights in science or else, as in the case of Lord Kames and Voltaire, men whose reputations did not rest on scientific work. Although these polygenists broke with tradition and Scripture in regarding man's history as a progress from a rude and savage condition, their view of nature was highly traditional in other respects, emphasizing the wise adaptation of every creature to its environment, the limits or variabilit, and the hierarchical arrangement of nature in a "great chain of being." 2 They tended 2 Among the polygenists with scientific training were Georg Forster (1754-1794) and Christoph Meiners (1747-1810); on their controversy with Kant, see Mühlmann (1948: 56-66). See also the widely read po1ygenist treatise by the Manchester physician Charles White: An Account of the Regular Gradation in Man, and in Different Animals and 1

to a racial interpretation of history, explaining differences in cultural achievement as produced by differences in biological endowment. These parent stocks, with proper pow'rs endu'd Each one through life his chosen way pursu'd. (Bradley 1808, 192.) This interpretation of history was by no means confined to the polygenists, but it is perhaps significant that the qualities of purity, permanence, and divine contrivance which later came to be associated with the idea of a pure race were qualities which the eighteenth century attributed to species rather than to varieties. It was in the monogenist camp that the leading naturalists of the period were to be found. Linnaeus, though troubled to find a generic character by which to differentiate man from some of the anthropoid creatures described in travel books, never doubted that the American, the European, the Asiatic, and the African, all belonged to one species. For Buffon and Kant the question of the unity of mankind was settled by the capacity of all races to interbreed successfully. Though Blumenbach rejected this criterion, he was sure that human variety could be explained by known causes of degeneration. Cuvier and Camper were monogenists too. For reasons already explained, the decision to regard human races as varieties rather than as species brought the problem of race formation to the fore. With the exception of Linnaeus and Cuvier, the monogenists were more interested in explaining the origin of races than in classifying them. Buffon never worked out a definite classification of races, although some authors have pretended to find one in his writings. The classifications of Kant and Blumenbach were well known, but only Kant laid special emphasis on this aspect of his work. A comment by the Reverend Samuel Stanhope Smith (1810: 240n.), the best known of the early American writers on anthropology, expresses a common eighteenthcentury attitude toward the various systems of racial classification: "The conclusion to be drawn from all this variety of opinions is, perhaps, that it is impossible to draw the line precisely between the various races of men, or even to enumerate them with certainty; and that it is in itself a useless labor to attempt it. 3 Vegetables...(1799). Lord Kames (Henry Home) was a Scotch jurist and literary critic, whose Sketches of the History of Man first appeared in 1774; it was reissued in a larger, revised edition in 1788. 3 Compare with this the attitude implied in the following statement in Kroeber's Anthropology: "While the basic When the monogenists attempted to explain the formation of human races their natural inclination, given the assumptions of eighteenthcentury biology, was to view the process as one of degeneration from the primordial type of the species. According to pre-evolutionary conceptions of nature, structure was fundamental, change superficial. If the basic structures of nature stars, mountains, seas, species, etc. had been divinely ordained in the beginning, change could consist of little more than degeneration from primitive perfection, or in random variation about the original norms, or in cyclical processes designed to maintain the existing order of nature; a perfect creation had no room for improvement. Hence both Buffon and Blumenbach thought of human races as produced by degeneration from a specific type which was "natural" and best. Both regarded the peoples in the vicinity of the Caspian Sea as most perfect in form and feature and drew from this supposed fact the conclusion that the progenitors of mankind must have lived there. To that region, writes Buffon, the natural historian must look to ascertain the "real and natural color" of man, the original white hue from which the shades of yellow, brown, and black have been produced by time and circumstance. In the last stages of degeneration the color white appears again, as in the white Negroes and white Indians reported by travellers. "But the white of the species, or the natural white, is widely different from the white of the individual, or the accidental white" (Buffon 1749 [1775]: 270; Blumenbach 1795: 236, 269). As to the causes and mechanisms of degeneration, a convenient explanation lay at hand in the time-worn environmentalist hypothesis, which attributed racial peculiarities grouping of white Europeans into Mediterraneans, Alpines, and Nordics... is still accepted, there is also general agreement that more refined distinctions are necessary.... Unfortunately there is much less agreement when it comes to names; here each author is likely to play his preference, as is also true in the field of accounting for origins, where subjective opinions as to mixtures, mutations, Palaeolithic survivals, genetic behavior, environmental influence, and the like have had free run. Fortunately this last diversity is not a very serious matter, because as yet almost nothing can be proved on how any race came to be as it is, and any opinion remains just an opinion. On the other hand, what races there are is much more a matter of fact, once enough measurements and observations are available, and on this the authorities agree much better (1948: 142). It is an interesting problem in the history of thought why the question of origins, or race formation, should have attracted so much attention in the period before Darwin's Origin of Species and the problem of classification so much after that event. 2

to the influence of climate, diet, and mode of life and assumed the transmissibility of acquired characters. Buffon revived and popularized this ancient hypothesis in the third volume of his Histoire Naturelle, published in 1749. According to Buffon (pp. 291-292), there was originally but one individual species of men, which after being multiplied and diffused over the whole surface of the earth, underwent divers changes, from the influence of the climate, from the difference of food, and of the mode of living, from epidemical distempers, as also from the intermixture, varied ad infinitum, of individuals more or less resembling each other... at first, these alterations were less considerable, and confined to individuals... afterwards, from continued action of the above causes becoming more general, more sensible, and more fixed; they formed varieties in the species... these varieties have been, and are still perpetuated from generation to generation, in the same manner as certain deformities, and certain maladies, pass from parents to their children; and... in fine, as they would never have been produced but by a concurrence of external and accidental causes, as they would never have been confirmed and rendered permanent but by time, and by the continued action of these causes, so it is highly probable, that in time they would in like manner gradually disappear, or even become different from what they at present are, if such causes were no longer to subsist, or if they were in any material point to vary. Buffon made little effort to show how environmental influences modify the human physique and temperament; he confined himself to asserting a general correlation of climate and racial type and to explaining away apparent exceptions to the rule. His anthropological speculations displayed little of the boldness and novelty which characterized his zoological writings. Blumenbach's theory of race formation was substantially the same as Buffon's, but he was somewhat more cautious about the transmissibility of acquired characters. After noting the opinion of Hippocrates and Aristotle that mutilations inflicted repeatedly over many generations may become hereditary and Buffon's suggestion that the callosities on the breast and knees of the camel were acquired characters, he considers the objection of the antienvironmentalists that Buffon's example begs the question and that the occasional birth of children without foreskins in families practising circumcision should be attributed to "chance" rather than to the custom of circumcision. In the end Blumenbach reserves judgment, confessing perplexity "why peculiarities of the same sort of conformation which are first made intentionally or accidentally, cannot in any way be handed down to descendants, when we see that other marks of race which have come into existence from other causes which up to the present time are unknown, especially in the face, as noses, lips, and eye-brows are universally propagated in families for few or many generations with less or greater constancy, just in the same way as organic disorders, as deficiencies of speech and pronunciation, and such like; unless perhaps... all these occur also by chance." (Blumenbach 1795: 204; see also Count 1946:145-147.) He stresses the importance of the hidden agencies through which the influence of climate and mode of life is mediated, declaring that "we must refer to mediate causes of this kind, which still escape our observation, the racial and constant forms of skulls, the racial colour of eyes, &c." (1795: 206) 4. The same kinds of phenomena which puzzled Blumenbach led other naturalists of his day to reject the environmental explanation of race and to seek some other solution to the problem. This group, including among others Maupertuis, Prichard (in the first edition of his Researches in 1813), and William Wells, stressed the importance of random variation and groped toward the discovery of some selective agency by which the sporting of the hereditary mechanism could be made to produce stable types. Maupertuis' speculations along this line led him in the direction of a particulate theory of inheritance: In order to explain all these phenomena - the production of accidental varieties, the continuation of these varieties from one generation to another, and finally, the establishment or the destruction of types [espèces]- it seems necessary to suppose the following: That the seminal liquor of each kind of animal contains an innumerable multitude of parts appropriate to form by their assemblage animals of the same kind. That within the seminal liquor of each individual, the parts appropriate to form traits similar to those of that individual are those which are ordinarily greatest in number and which have the greatest affinity; although there are many others for different traits... The parts analogous ton those of the father and the mother being most numerous and having the greatest affinity for each other are those which will unite most frequently and they will form ordinarily animals similar to those from which they are born. Chance, or the scarcity of family traits, will, however, form other assemblages; and one will see a white child born of black parents, or perhaps even black of white parents. These productions are at first only accidental: the original parts of the ancestors become again more abundant in the seminal fluid; after some generations, 4 In the United States the Reverend S. S. Smith advocated a similar theory, laying particular emphasis on social conditions and standards as influences molding the human physique and temperament. 3

or in the following generation, the ancestral type comes to the top, and the child, instead of resembling his father and mother, resembles more distant progenitors. In order to create races which perpetuate themselves, it is probably necessary that these generations be repeated several times; the particles appropriate to the original [parental] traits must become less numerous at eacb generation, dissipate, or remain few in number that a new chance operation would be necessary to reproduce the original [parental] type. One thing is certain, that all the varieties which might characterize new kinds of animals and plants tend to extinction; they are departures from nature and can be maintained only by art or by regimen. These works of nature tend always to revert to the original type. 5 Buffon had reasoned that the combinations and permutations of the system of matter in motion must eventually produce an infinite variety of living creatures, some of them much better adapted to survive than others, and had envisaged the possibility that some species had become extinct as a result of revolutions on the earth's surface or of competition with the latest arrival, man. But he did not explore the possibilities of this idea in biology, and for some reason did not use it at all in attempting to account for the races of man. Prichard renewed the search for an explanation in terms of genetic variation and selective agency in the first edition of his Researches into the Physical History of Man, published in 1813. Rejecting the environmentalism of Buffon and Blumenbach, he substituted for the old idea of degeneration from an original model "the transmutation of the characters of the Negro into those of the European, or the evolution of white varieties in black races of men" (p. 233). In support of this theory he argued that savage people are almost always dark in complexion, that civilization must produce the same tendency to variation in human beings as domestication does in plants and animals, and that history confirms the idea that the direction of variation is from darker to lighter shades. But why should the variation produced by the "domestication" of man exhibit a trend? Faced with this problem, Prichard reverted to teleology. On the one hand, he asserted that the laws of variation had been wisely contrived to bring about changes which would adapt mankind to the civilized state. On the other, he suggested that such a trend might result from the operation of esthetic preference in the selection of marriage partners, this preference being shaped by man's unconscious apprehension of the "natural 5 Maupertuis 1756, 2: 120-124. The Vénus Physique was first published in 1745. The translation is mine. See in this connection Lovejoy 1904. standard of human beauty." The latter argument gave way when he admitted that esthetic standards varied from group to group and were as much an effect as a cause of variety in feature and physique. On the whole, he found the principle of sexual selection more useful in explaining the perpetuation of existing varieties than in accounting for the supposed trend from black to white varieties. In 1813, the same year in which Prichard's Researches appeared, William Wells presented to the Royal Society his famous speculation concerning the origin of the Negro race. Suppose, he said, that resistance to certain diseases is correlated with, though not caused by, darkness of skin color. What would happen to a primitive population gradually dispersing itself over the African continent? Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first few scattered inhabitants of the middle region of Africa, some one would be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race would consequently multiply, while the others would decrease, not only from their inability to sustain the attacks of disease, but from their incapacity of contending with their more vigorous neighbors. The colour of this race I take for granted, from what has been already said, would be dark. But the same disposition to form varieties still existing, a darker and a darker race would in the course of time occur I and as the darkest would be the best fitted for the climate, this would at length become the most prevalent, if not the only race, in the particular country in which it had originated [Wells 1818: 435-436]. Wells gave no explanation of the disposition to form varieties. It is an observable fact, he declared, that varieties of greater or less magnitude occur constantly throughout the animal kingdom. In a freely interbreeding population the varieties produced tend to disappear through intermixture, but in regions cut off by geographical or other barriers, accidental peculiarities in appearance may become established and persist over generations. Among domestic animals, breeds are established by artificial selection. But the selection which man has practised on domestic animals may have been practised by nature on the human race, "chiefly during its infancy, when a few wandering savages, from ignorance and improvidence, must have found it difficult to subsist throughout the various seasons of the year, even in countries the most favourable to their health" (p. 436). Immanuel Kant's theory of race formation stands in a class by itself, occupying in some respects an intermediate position between the 4

environmentalist hypothesis and the randomvariation-and-selection approach. Kant agreed emphatically with Buffon that genetic relationship was the key to natural history and that mankind constituted one related group, since all types of human beings could interbreed and produce fertile offspring. 6 Unlike Buffon, however, he did not conclude that racial classification was unimportant. Instead, he drew the inference that a sound racial classification must be based on characters which are invariably hereditary. Upon surveying the array of human physical traits, he found only one skin color which seemed to be transmitted invariably from generation to generation, reproducing itself in all matings between persons of the same color and blending to form an intermediate shade in unions between persons of different hue. Moreover, there seemed to be four basic skin colors from which all others could be derived by mixture the white of the northern European, the copperred of the American Indian, the black of the Senegambian, and the olive-yellow of the orienta1 Indian and each of these four primary colors was found to predominate one of four regions of the earth. What could be more natural, then, than assume that these were the four basic races from which the great diversity human types had been produced by interbreeding? This conception of the races of man would have been indistinguishable from the polygenist idea of distinct human species created in the various regions of the world but capable of crossing to form intermediate types had it not been for Kant's insistence that the four primary 6 Kant made a distinction between the description of nature (Naturbeschreibung) and natural history (Naturgeschichte). " Academic taxonomy," he wrote, "deals with classes; it merely arranges according to similarities; which a natural taxonomy arranges according to kinships determined by generation. The former supplies a school-system for the sake of memorizing; the latter a natural system for the comprehension; the former has for its purpose only to bring creatures under a system of labelings; but the latter seeks to bring them under a system of laws" (1775: 16). This distinction he developed further in his essay of 1785: "The wolf, the fox, the jackal, the hyena, and the house-dog are so many kinds of four-footed beasts. If one assumes that each of them has had to have a separate ancestry, then they are that many species, but if one concedes that they could all have descended from one stem, then they are only races thereof. Species and genus are not distinguished in natural history [Naturgeschichte] (which has to do only with ancestry and origin). Only in the description of nature[naturbeschreibung], since it is a matter of comparing distinguishing marks, does this distinction come into play. What is species here must there often be called only race" (1785: 100 n.). races were sprung from one common stock. The polygenist hypothesis was objectionable to him for several reasons. For one thing, it involved postulating more causes (creations) than were necessary to account for the variety of mankind. Moreover, if the four basic types were distinct species, it was hard to understand how they were able to interbreed successfully and why the skin color of each type should be transmitted so invariably in each case of crossing. For animals whose variety is so great that an equal number of separate creations would have been necessary for their existence could indeed belong to a nominal family grouping (to classify them by certain similarities) but never to a real one, other than one as to which at least the possibility of descent from a single common pair is to be assumed... [Otherwise] the singular compatibility of the generative forces of two species (which, although quite foreign as to origins, yet can be fruitfully mated with each other) would have to be assumed with no other explanation than that nature so pleases. If, in order to demonstrate this latter supposition, one points to animals in which crossing can happen despite the [supposed] difference of their original stems, he will in every case reject the hypothesis and, so much the more because such a fruitful union occurs, infer the unity of the group, as from the crossing of dogs and foxes, etc. The unfailing inheritance of peculiarities of both parents is thus the only true and at thc same time adequate touchstone of the unity of the group from which they have sprung: namely, the original seeds [Keime] inherent in this group developing in a succession of generations without which those hereditary variations would not have originated and would presumably not necessarily have become hereditary [1785: 102]. When Kant came to explain how the four basic races had been derived from one ancestral stock, he found himself unable to accept either the environmentalist or the variation-andselection approach. As to the first, not only was there no evidence to suggest that acquired characters are transmitted to succeeding generations, but the very idea that human art or external circumstance can alter the deep-laid design of nature incorporated in the generative force seemed to Kant a contradiction of one of the soundest maxims of reason, namely: "that in all organized Nature, despite all changes in single individuals, their species maintains itself unchanged (according to the school formula: quaelibet natura est conservatrix sui) " (1785: 97). Environment, said Kant, may provide the occasion for new hereditary developments, but it cannot be the direct cause of them. For external things can be causes of an occasion, but not evocative causes, of that which is necessarily inherited and makes for resemblance. Just as chance or physical mechanical causes cannot produce an organic 5

body, no more can they add something to its generative force, i.e., effect something that can reproduce itself, if it be a special configuration or a relationship between the parts [1775: 19]. This conviction of the wise design of nature made the idea of random variation and natural selection equally repugnant to Kant. Hence he was driven to envisage still another mode of race formation: namely, preformation and subsequent development as an adaptive response to changed environmental conditions. He conceived the ancestral human stock as having been endowed with a variety of latent powers which could be evoked or suppressed as new conditions of life required. The process by which the Negro race ex-speciated he described as follows (1785: 103): We know now, for example, that human blood turns black (as is to be seen in blood coagulum) when it is overloaded with phlogiston. Now the strong body odor of the Negroes, not be avoided by any degree of cleanliness, gives reason to suppose that their skin absorbs a very large amount of phlogiston from the blood, and that nature must so have designed this skin that in them the blood can dephologisticate [sic] itself through the skin to a far greater degree than is the case with us in whom the latter function is mostly performed by the lungs. But the true Negroes live in regions in which, by thick forest and areas that have become swamps, the air is so phlogisticated that according to Lind's report there is really danger there for English sailors if they travel even for a day up the Gambia river to buy meat. Hence it was a very wisely designed device of Nature so to constitute their skin that the blood, as it cannot dispose of enough phlogiston through the lungs, can dephlogisticate itself through the skin much better than it can in our case. It must then carry very much phlogiston into the ends of the arteries, and thus here - that is, just under the skin itself, be overloaded with it, and so show through black, although in the internal parts of the body it is red enough. The difference of constitution of the Negro's skin from ours is also noticeable to the sense of touch. As to the purposefulness of the physical constitution of the other races, as it may be determined by their color, one cannot, to be sure, establish it with the same probability; but grounds of explanation of skin color which could support that theory of purposefulness are not entirely lacking. 7 7 Kant thought that his theory of race formation also explained why the four skin-colors, alone of all the various human traits, are invariably transmitted from generation to generation. "What else can be the origin of this than that they must have lain in the seeds of the original stem, to us unknown, of the human race, and that, as natural dispositions necessary for the perpetuation of the race, at least in the first epoch of its expansion, they must unfailingly appear in succeeding generations?" (1785: 98). Skin color he regarded as the "outward sign" of an internal organization necessary for survival under certain conditions. But he did not explain why skin color should be the only remaining vestige of these early adaptive responses of the human stock to particular environments or how the persistence of these traits after they In this passage Kant anticipates Wells' later suggestion that skin color is correlated with physiological processes which are essential for survival. But Kant views the process of adaptation as a positive and pre-ordained response of the organism to the demands of the environment, whereas Wells regards it as resulting from the elimination of those organisms which do not happen to vary in an adaptive direction. Kant's teleology breaks down, however, when he faces the problem as to why the American tropics have not produced a blackskinned type. The reason, he conjectures, is that the inhabitants of those regions came there from the Old World by an arctic route and that, having undergone adaptive ex-speciation in northern latitudes, they were thereby precluded from exspeciating again in response to a warmer environment. This explanation may have served to account for the absence of Negroes in Central America, but it placed a severe strain on the notion of the "wise foresight of Nature." In summary, the eighteenth-century approach to the problem of race formation was strongly conditioned by the prevailing conceptions of nature. Most naturalists regarded the different human types as varieties rather than as species and hence felt called upon to explain their derivation from the original, created type of the species. Three main lines of speculation developed. The most popular of these attributed deviations from the original human stock to the influence of climate, diet, and social habits and assumed the inheritance of acquired characters. A considerable number of writers would not grant this assumption, however. Of these, one group became interested in the seemingly unpredictable "sporting" of the mechanism of heredity and speculated as to what selective agencies might produce stable types from the variations thrown up in the course of procreation. The natural tendency here was to view the production of new forms as a progress toward higher types rather than as a decline from original perfection. Finally, Immanuel Kant, unwilling to concede that the adaptation of organisms to their environment could be the product of chance and circumstance, developed a theory of preformation and subsequent adaptive ex-speciation. Thus, the period before 1815 was remarkable not only for the interest displayed in the problem of race formation but also for the had ceased to be adaptive could be reconciled with the "wise foresight of Nature." 6

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